Hunee - Bobos Alone in Paradise

Hunee - Bobos Alone in Paradise
It's been a year since Hunee's last release. Back then he was on the tip of tongues whispering bigger and better things. But, as befits the current laissez-faire house scene in Berlin, Hunee was never going to pander to hype. I forget how the cliche on amount versus standard goes, but it clearly applies to him. There's another one about good things and waiting which is also apt.

House can sometimes be portrayed as the vanilla ice-cream of dance music flavours, though Bobo has the ingredients of a more colourful scoop. The tracks seem like four-four spectres frocked in the rags of less bespoke beats. This is mostly the doing of sprightly hi-hats that only rarely streamline their usual offbeat lane and spend the rest of the time dancing to their own rhythm giddily and prominently in the mix. "Sandy Days," with all its metronome-chasing snare hits and loosely strewn samples, is Hunee at his most ragamuffin, but even the comparatively smarter title track and its dub are striking for how unkempt they are.

A brash bass arpeggio at the start quickly evaporates any notion that "Bobo" is going to be slick like previous productions "Tour de Force" or "Amiadar." And when the spirited string-sounding chords join at an unexpected juncture outside the sequence of sixteen, it's time to revel in a house record not because it sounds nostalgic or classic, but for precisely the opposite reason: it's not trying to be anything. This allows Hunee a free rein to rub seemingly disparate sounds and samples together. Once or twice they border on the busy, though overall the jigsaw pieces slot comfortably as in "Like Dat" where jungle sounds, jowly bass and space-rippling pads come together to form an easy-to-get Magic Eye/Ear. Let's hope it's not another year before the next release.

More on Hunee

Hunee pretty much operates on his own terms, in his own world. Since a first release in 2009 he has been in no rush to make it big, but instead has slowly seeped out into the world his choice cuts of rhythmically playful and super-soul infused house mu..
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